


Telling myself it's not as hard as it seems

by deirdre_c



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deirdre_c/pseuds/deirdre_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fire, Dean sifts through what’s left in Jess and Sam’s apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telling myself it's not as hard as it seems

Dean stares at the blank line of Sam’s back.

These past couple of days he’s been blindsided again and again by Sam’s size—a few years’ of added height and bulk suddenly filling up and overflowing the passenger seat in the Impala. But tonight, curled up in bed and facing the wall, wearing Dean’s too-small shirt and too-short sweats, hair still wet and matted from the shower, Sam’s right back to being a little boy. Little brother.

“I’m going back there.” His voice is still gritty from the smoke. He’s pretty sure Sam’s is no better, not that Sam’s said two words since they left the scene. “Dad’ll want —“ Sam’s taut shoulders twitch at that and Dean starts over. “I’m gonna do some reconnaissance.”

Sam doesn’t respond, continues to hold himself carefully still. Barely breathing, barely there.

Dean nods curtly to himself, shakes his hands out of the fists he keeps finding them in, turns toward the door and pockets the room key. He nearly turns back, but sitting staring like an idiot while Sam silently tears himself apart isn’t exactly helpful, and—even exhausted as he is— it’s sure as hell neither of them is going to get any sleep. Might as well get moving.

He slides into the car, stretching over to crank down the passenger side window and let the cool stream of air flush out the slight stench of smoke that lingers in the creases of the seats and under the dash. It doesn’t take him long at this time of night to make his way over to where Jess and Sam’s place is…was.

Sam’s in no shape to go back there and anyway, he probably ought to keep a low profile to avoid getting fingered by the authorities for arson or murder or some other fucking nonsense.

*****

Dean parks a couple of blocks away, in case someone saw the Impala out front right after the fire broke out. All of the fire engines have cleared away, but there’re still two squad cars parked at each end of the block. He approaches one pair of cops stationed out front of the building and flashes his handy _Palo Alto Daily_ credential (useful over the years for a guy like him or Dad lurking around on campus). Not that these clowns will have any information about what _really_ happened, but it never hurts to check. Plus, in the unlikely event that they catch him inside, it’ll make a good cover story.

Then he circles around back, looking for a convenient unguarded entrance. Even at three a.m., groups of college kids are wandering around, gossiping and gawking. He suspects they’re just random creeps, but, hey, maybe some of them were friends with Sam or Jess; it bugs him either way. But between them and the murk of streetlit shadows, it’s a piece of cake for Dean to sidle up to the building, duck under the yellow police tape, and get into the sodden, ruined stairwell that leads up to the apartment.

By flashlight, the stairs look beat to hell but safe enough. Dean takes his EMF meter out of his coat pocket and begins his sweep of the area. It’s difficult to lift the Walkman to shoulder height; somehow it feels heavier than it usually does.

He tries to focus on his training, treat this like any other hunt. He scans over every bit of wall and floor and ceiling as he trudges up the stairs, searching for residue, clues, something that might tell them what this cocksucker is, put them on its trail. He fans his anger, pushes down the fear, the rekindled memories of heat and dark and frantic running, running, running with the weight of a bundle too big for his small arms, the knowledge that tonight he was only a hair’s-breadth from too late.

Sam’s apartment door lies off its hinges, flat on the hall floor. Dean can’t remember whether he left it open behind them as he hauled Sam out, but clearly the firefighters didn’t need a key. Inside, the place is a goddamn disaster of puddled water mixed with soot, exposed wires and blistered paint, charred carpet and broken furniture. Everything above knee height is coated gray and greasy and the acrid smell of scorched plastics and plaster overwhelms any trace of sulfur or ozone Dean might sniff out.

He’s got a Hefty bag shoved in his coat pocket in the vague hope of salvaging some of Sam’s belongings from the wreckage left by the fire and its dousing. Looks like he might as well have just brought a Ziplock.

He forces himself to check out the bedroom first.

The beam of his flashlight cuts through the murk and he finds that the ceiling and floor are both gone. All that’s left are big, gaping holes with ragged edges, slightly smoldering, like a pit straight to Hell.

Suddenly, he’s absurdly angry at Jess. If she hadn’t…if Sam hadn’t been with her, she’d still be alive, Sam wouldn’t have bothered coming back last night or maybe even left Stanford long ago. Sam knows how to handle himself—most of the time—but Jess, she was vulnerable and she made _Sam_ vulnerable and now she’s dead and he’s fucked up in ways Dean has no idea how to even _begin_ to fix and he doesn’t even have any fucking _clothes_ to wear and Dad’s not--

Dean slams his palm against the doorway, then digs his fingernails into the softened wood with all his might. The pain settles him, grounds him. _Concentrate._ See what there is to see here, take what’s here to be taken, head back to the motel, throw Sammy’s ass in the car, drive-thru breakfast, and hit the road for Colorado.

Work the plan.

It’s not like it was a large apartment to begin with, and it doesn’t take long for Dean to sift his way methodically through it. A couple hours later he’s worked his way back to front door and it all pretty much sucks six ways from Sunday. He couldn’t dredge up a single lead, not one thing to tell him what brought this on Sam, what did this to Jess. His bag has only a handful of things he could identify as worth saving rattling around in the bottom. One big fucking failure.

Even though it’s wrecked and ruined, the contours of Sam’s life here are still plain to Dean’s eyes. The overflowing bookshelves (books now coated with soot), the matching dishes (now shattered from the heat), art on the wall (charred), house plants on the windowsills (dead). They're the things that Sam rarely, if ever, had in their nomadic childhood. They're the things Jess gave him.

He breathes in deep and nearly hacks up a lung. He needs to get out of there.

The last place left to search is the entertainment center, its cheap veneer pulling off in blistered strips, the television a ragged mouth of glass.

The pop of Dean’s knee-joints is a counterpoint to the sounds of settling debris as he crouches down. He yanks open the buckled and wedged cabinet doors. Inside is a stereo and DVD system including— he’s surprised to find— an old-fashioned turntable. Beneath those shelves are stacks of CDs and two plastic milkcrates of vinyl and, although Dean’s certain that none of it could possibly still be playable, he tucks his flashlight in between jaw and shoulder and begins to thumb his way through.

Most of the CDs have “Sam Winchester” written on the top right corner of the jewelcase in small neat handwriting that must be Jess’s. Dean rolls his eyes as he flips through five Dave Matthews albums and some groups with stupid names like Maroon 5 and Puddle of Mudd (but, hey, “Dashboard Confessional” sounds kinda Winchesterish) and, Jesus, Sam, Norah Jones and Justin Timberlake, back to back. When he comes across Avril Lavigne’s “Let Go” album, he resolves to call Sam “Skater Boy” for the next thirty years.

Not that he’s ever willingly listened to more than seven seconds of that particular song, of course.

The last CD in the stack has a generic white insert, unusually pristine compared with the rest of the smoke-damaged contents of the cabinet. Dean peers at the front and finds that it’s a mix made for Sam by Jess, lots of hearts and lips and Xs and Os all over the front, so girly he’s surprised the whole thing isn’t glittering. But when he flips it to look at the playlist, he fumbles and almost drops it on the floor. There’s ”Whole Lotta Love” and ”I’m Burning For You,” “The Best Of Times,” ”Crazy On You” and even “Fire” by goddamned Jimi Hendrix.

Still holding Jess’s mix CD tightly in his left hand, he starts flipping through the vinyl bins with his right. Every album has her name in the corner and it’s practically a complete library of classic rock and heavy metal greats. There’s the Allman Brothers and Judas Priest and The Stones and Alice Cooper. He gingerly eases the disc of The Yardbirds’ “Roger the Engineer” album out of its sleeve, but he can see right away that it’s been warped. He checks a couple of others, but they all appear to be unsalvageable.

Dean rolls off of his haunches and onto his ass, heedless of the mess it makes on the seat of his jeans.

From that angle he spies a shoebox tucked in the very back of the cabinet. Juggling the CD and his flashlight, unwilling to put anything down in the filth on the floor, he hauls it into his lap and pries off the lid.

Inside it’s full of artifacts Dean recognizes immediately from Sam’s childhood: a science fair medal, a woven-thread friendship bracelet, a wallet sleeve full of high school portraits, the medallion of Saint Christopher that Pastor Jim had given Sam for his twelfth birthday. There’s also a cassette. One Dean had given Sam the morning he was leaving for California. _Gotta make sure you don’t forget what **real** music sounds like, bitch._ He’d forgotten about it ‘til now.

He reads over his own handwriting crammed onto the tiny lines of the insert. The bands are a near match to those on Jess’s CD, including Zeppelin, BOC, and yes, even Hendrix.

His eyes ache from the dim light and the crap in the air. He slowly, gently places the shoebox and the CD in the plastic bag and hustles down the stairs.

*****

According to the yellow pages, the local thrift store doesn’t open until nine, so Dean stops at Wal-mart to pick up some spare clothes: a pair of jeans, a couple of tees, a cheap pair of sneakers, socks and boxers. It’s just to tide them over until Sam is ready to shop for himself. He also grabs two coffees—one black and one foamy—and a box of Krispy Kremes. Some things never change.

Then he drives back to Sam.

As soon as he opens the door to the room, he sees that his brother’s asleep, face blotchy and etched with deep lines, one arm reaching out across the empty sheets. Dean edges cautiously to the bedside and tucks the cassette tape into the curl of Sam’s outstretched fingers, then crosses the room to slide the CD into the pocket of his duffle.

He’ll give it to Sam some other time.


End file.
